1. Technical Field
The invention relates to a protector that is appropriately used to arrange a wire harness.
2. Background Art
A wire harness (electric wire) is widely used for an in-vehicle wiring of an electric system of a vehicle and the like. The wire harness is partially accommodated in a protector, which is fixed to a vehicle body by a fixture such as harness clamp and is arranged at a predetermined position of the vehicle body, and is arranged at the vehicle body. There are a variety of protectors. For example, a protector disclosed in JP-A-8-140237 has a long shape in which both sidewalls are provided to erect from both sides of a bottom wall, and a center thereof in a longitudinal direction is curved. The bottom wall is provided thereon with a partition wall that extends in the longitudinal direction at the curved part. By the partition wall, the curved protector is defined with an inner periphery-side arranging path and an outer periphery-side arranging path.
For example, as shown in FIG. 3, a fastening means such as a bolt is inserted into a fixing hole 507 of a protector fixing part 505 provided to a main body 503, so that a protector 501 is fixed to a vehicle body. The protector fixing part 505 is provided using a recess-shaped space 513 that is formed at an inner side (one end-side in an electric wire arranging direction) of curved parts 511 of electric wires 509. Thereby, a size of the outermost width W of the main body is suppressed to be small, so that the main body 503 is suppressed from being enlarged. For example, if the protector fixing part 505 is provided at an outer side of convex-shaped portions 515 of the curved parts 511, the size of the outermost width W of the main body is increased. Also, an electric wire accommodation space 517 in the protector 501, through which the electric wires 509 pass, has a minimum accommodation width d within which the electric wires 509 are accommodated, considering a part variation. At this time, a linear part and the curved part 511 have the same accommodation width d.
In an electric vehicle that travels using an electric motor or a hybrid vehicle that travels using both an engine and an electric motor, a large-diameter electric wire 509 (thick electric wire) is recently used for a high tension cable connecting an inverter and a motor. The large-diameter electric wire 509 has high stiffness. Particularly, when a curved amount of the electric wire 509 is high (when a curvature is large), it is difficult to perform an arranging operation. Also, when the stiffness is high, it is not possible to absorb an extra length, which occurs upon cutting of the electric wire or upon arranging thereof, by loosening or folding the electric wire 509, which also increases an operator's arranging burden. Regarding this, when the accommodation width d of the electric wire accommodation space 517 is simply widened, the size of the outermost width W of the main body is increased, so that the main body 503 is enlarged.
The invention has been made keeping in mind the above situations, and an object of the invention is to provide a structure of a protector enabling an arranging operation of an electric wire to be easily performed.